Jeni Britton x Amy Guittard Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. I have a little year-end treat for you. It's Jeni Britton, founder of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams in conversation with Amy Guittard, CMO of the Guittard Chocolate Company. So ice cream and chocolate. Who doesn't like those two things? Their chat took place at Jubilee Wine Country, Cherry Bombe's weekend-long celebration of wine, women, creativity, and community. It was held this past October at Solage Napa Valley in Calistoga, California and was an amazing two days. Jeni and Amy cover a lot of ground from Jeni's early days to her connection with nature to her newest entrepreneurial effort.
Thank you to the sponsors of Jubilee Wine Country: Kerrygold, San Pellegrino, California Grown, California Walnuts, and California Prunes. And thank you to all the Wine Country winemakers. We had the privilege of meeting and working with. If you'd like to attend Jubilee next year, our Jubilee New York conference will take place Saturday, April 12th at the Glasshouse on the West Side with gorgeous views of the city and the Hudson River. It's a brand new location for us and it is going to be our biggest and best Jubilee yet.
We launched Jubilee back in 2014 because we knew women were being left out of food conferences at the time. We wanted to create a space where women could connect with potential business partners, brand representatives, publishing executives, and more. Over the past decade, folks have made deals at Jubilee with the likes of Whole Foods, gotten cookbook deals, and found literary agents. Thousands of women have networked, made friends, and found community and inspiration at Jubilee. It's an event we are very proud of here at Cherry Bombe, and we'd love nothing more than for you to join us in New York.
You have one more day to snag an early bird ticket, then prices go up. If you Bombsquad member, be sure to check your inbox for a link to special member pricing. Visit cherrybombe.com for tickets and more information. Enjoy Jeni Britton and Amy Guittard live from Jubilee Wine Country.
Amy Guittard:
Jeni, I'm so excited to be here with you, but I'm going to start with the hardest question. What is your favorite ice cream flavor?
Jeni Britton:
My favorite ice cream flavor is the one that I'm eating right now, whenever I'm eating it. It usually is, out of our ice cream is the one that he probably eat the most, is the Brown Butter Almond Brittle, which is one that I created in 2009, inspired by Roald Dahl. He wrote about his favorite flavor. He grew up in Norway. He wrote about his favorite flavor when he was a kid growing up, but he wrote about this as an adult, like a little essay, and I made the ice cream inspired by his essay. And then I just brown the butter and I love that flavor very much, but I really am an ice cream eater, and so it's not just my ice creams, but I mean, I have a lot of favorite ice creams. I eat a lot of ice cream. That's why I don't really drink wine anymore.
Amy Guittard:
We eat a lot of ice cream in our house. When I was a kid, I used to put water in my ice cream.
Jeni Britton:
What?
Amy Guittard:
I know.
Jeni Britton:
That's weird.
Amy Guittard:
But it would get really icy and super yummy. I only do it with strawberry, but anyway, I digress.
Jeni Britton:
I mean, I guess when you're making milkshake, you put milk in it.
Amy Guittard:
Yeah.
Jeni Britton:
Okay.
Amy Guittard:
Anyway, a little segue from the previous chat, but your gateway to ice cream was perfume. How did one lead to the other?
Jeni Britton:
I am very connected to my sense of smell, very connected to the forest. I grew up in central Illinois. We had forest land, we had maple trees that we tapped every year from maple syrup. We had our own honeybees. We grew many, many, many gardens. Anywhere that the sun would shine through, we'd put a garden. And so I just grew up going there a lot. So I was very connected to my sense of smell from that place. When I got older and I was studying art at Ohio State University, I had a friend, well, I had a big crush on this Parisian guy who was in town studying something to do with scent in the chemistry department in grad school at Ohio State University. And I worked at the French Bakery where he always came in, so he would bring me these little vials of scent. It was very romantic, very sweet.
But I realized in that, that I'm really connected to my sense of smell. And so, could I use scent to transport people to make something like art. And it wasn't long after that that I had the idea to mix the scent into already made ice cream. So I bought a vanilla ice cream and then I mixed scent into it. So actually I had this rose petal, which was like 50,000 rose petals to make one ounce of rose essential oil. So I had spent a lot of money on eight drops of it, and I put two of them in the ice cream, and I realized that ice cream is the perfect carrier of scent. And that my grandmother always said, "Don't put the butter next to the onion because it'll absorb the scent of the onion." And it just struck me as like, well, this is what ice cream making is.
Whether you have a synthetic vanilla or real vanilla or any other thing, any other flavor, pecans, or mint, or coffee, or chocolate, it's all about scent. So it's the way the butter fat melts in your tongue, which butter fat melts two degrees below body temperature. It's the perfect carrier of scent. You can load it up with scent, freeze it, and then it melts in on contact with your tongue. So please, next time you're eating ice cream, think about that, because you're just breathing and you're sensing the air as it relaxes. I mean, 26 years later, I still think that ice cream is the sexiest, most beautiful, most luscious thing, food. It's like an experience, ever.
Amy Guittard:
Yeah. No, that's great. And your first ice cream business was a very creative endeavor. It was almost an edible art project. What were some of the more interesting flavors you offered?
Jeni Britton:
Well, I mean, I was in a public market and yeah, I was young. I walked out of art school. I was in a figure drawing class and I'd been making ice cream for a couple of months, and a model walked in that I couldn't draw. I just always struggled to draw her specifically. She was really beautiful and very tall, and I kind liked the round people, and big paper that I would always draw on, and I didn't want to sit there for three hours and try to work out her angles. I wanted to go home and make ice cream. So I did, I left. And I left my portfolio there, and I left my art supplies, which is when my family was really broke. I mean, I was really on my own at the time. My family was out of my picture, out of the picture of my life. So to buy art supplies, I mean, this is a huge deal when you're 20, 21 and you have no money at all. I left everything there and I just went home and made ice cream and never went back.
So Scream, I started in a public farmer's market and basically what I did was I just used everything in the market and made it into ice cream. You have to try it once. So whatever it was, was there. I mean, of course all the cheeses, which that's pretty easy, but even meats and fishes. Fish eventually went into ice cream, especially smoked fish and things like that. A lot of it was learning the lesson that you can almost make anything taste surprisingly good in ice cream. It's surprising. You can put smoked fish in there and it's actually surprisingly good, but it also isn't great. So, that was a huge lesson. Okay, does this really need to exist? Just because it is a little bit surprising to people who taste it, nobody would actually get a scoop. And that was, I think one of the biggest learnings actually of Scream.
Amy Guittard:
So that led to the launch of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. What was your vision in the beginning?
Jeni Britton:
Well, the funny thing is back then, I mean, I'm not sure what other people were doing, but I was just a kid in the middle of Ohio doing this. I had a big vision. I knew that Ben and Jerry's were normal people, or whatever they were. I mean, they were not even normal people, they were hippies from Vermont. They weren't special. They weren't particularly smart, just like me. I saw them in the grocery store and I thought, well, I can do the same thing, but with my farmer's market ingredients and the way that I do it, and with my sort of way, or whatever.
Back when I opened Jeni's, it was a fight to get back open, because I had already had a failure. So I went back to the market and they were like, "Nope, you've been here before. It didn't work. We don't want you anymore." So, I got a job at the market. I started showing up every day. I started bringing them ice cream all the time, and another year goes by and they finally sort of relent and let me have another space in the market. But to think of it as a launch, it was a different era of business. It was a different era. There were not a lot of women doing this anyway.
Amy Guittard:
This was what, 2000?
Jeni Britton:
This was 2002, and we really didn't. I mean, there was Inc. Magazine, which I read a lot, but we didn't really talk about this. We weren't talking about VC then. I mean, almost no one was talking about that. So you just started a business, you just did it. That was what I did. I started Jeni's in the North Market. It's called the North Market, it's an indoor public market. The oldest one in the Midwest just started kind of going again from there.
But I had learned a lot of lessons from Scream. Number one really was that I couldn't make all the flavors that I wanted to every day. I had to have something consistent. I had to actually have a signature lineup of ice cream flavors, and I think this is true of any business, and I really wasn't doing that at Scream. At Scream I was just making whatever I wanted to every day. I realized that I don't want to go to any business that just does whatever they want every day. I want them to want to make me happy. And so that was what I did at Jeni's. I had my regular flavors that I knew everyone loved, and then I had flavors that I could just do whatever I wanted with with the market, or some whim, or whatever, and it made no difference.
Amy Guittard:
Yeah. Speaking of, I mean, creativity is such an important part of your brand and core to you as an individual as well. I know that the great outdoors is also a really big part of who you are, and since we're in beautiful Calistoga, hopefully everyone's gotten out to be able to enjoy the trails around here. Can you share a little bit about how nature kind of fuels your creativity and building your brands?
Jeni Britton:
Yeah, I mean, I'm one of those people that has to be alone to be creative. I spend a lot of time in L.A. I spend a lot of time in New York. And whenever I'm there, I start to look and act like everybody else there, and I have to actually get out of those and be in a place where I can see the horizon or just be completely alone.
And when I'm staying alone, in the forest is where I like to go, at least I try to go every day. What happens there for me is that I'm even alone, I'm even not with myself. I sort of atomize and I let myself go. So I'm not even with myself in a way. I'm just a being. I'm like a spark of light in the forest, and I think when you open yourself up like that, you sort of surrender to just everything. The universe gives you gifts. You see things, you feel things that you wouldn't when you're trying to control what's going on, and when you're in your brain, you're always trying to control everything around you. And when you let that go and you can just be in your body, you just receive so many beautiful gifts.
Amy Guittard:
Yeah, no. I appreciate that. I always think that when you can see a horizon line or a big mountain or a large tree, it makes me feel small and kind of puts me in my place, and lets me sort of take a step back, and have that perspective.
Jeni Britton:
Oh, yeah.
Amy Guittard:
Thanks for that. Another thing that distinguishes you as a founder, and the face of your brand is politics. Some business leaders choose to keep their politics private. You have a very good relationship with Mr. Joe Biden, and have been campaigning for Kamala Harris, and sharing that on Instagram. What's behind that decision?
Jeni Britton:
It's so funny, because to me, it's not at all controversial, but I get it, especially in the art era now. I grew up believing really strongly, my family taught me, that we're all founding fathers of this country, that we all are carrying the torch forward, that it is inherent. We have to be participating in building the communities that we want to live in, the country we want to live in with the future. That doesn't happen if we're not doing it, somebody else is doing it for us, and they may not be doing it in the way we want them to. For me, it always goes back to values. It's not politics, it's values, and I just feel like you get out and you learn, and you try to advance. But it has been really interesting over the last few years, because I'm in Ohio, and Ohio is a place where it's important on the political... It's less of a swing state now, but for a long time it was we have to fight for things in Ohio.
We had our reproductive freedom constitution amendment on last year, and I mean, the Republicans were really taking a lot of those rights away and playing a lot of tricks, and I didn't think it was right. And this year it's gerrymandering and all these things. So I've just stepped really into it and learned a lot. I've learned, first of all, over the last, let's say five years, I've learned how many people are behind the scenes that we don't see every day working, and caring, and working tirelessly to move this country forward. I think sometimes it's easy to sit in our chair and be on Instagram or whatever, and just be like, "You know what they should do, they should do this, and they should do this." And those people don't know, but there are so many people who are tackling issues just one tiny millimeter at a time every single day that are passionate about it.
And I wish that we could all see that, because it's beautiful and it takes everybody, but it's been really cool. And then, yeah. I mean, yeah, I'm definitely out with the campaign. I believe very much that my story is also a reproductive freedom story, because there's no way that I could have started Jeni's or Scream at 22 years old and devoted the time that I had to get it off the ground if I hadn't had access to Planned Parenthood. I mean, I would take the bus to get my birth control pills every month. I mean, it's essential that young women have the ability to control our reproductive timeline. It seems obvious to us, but it's an economic issue. We can't rise above the circumstances we were born into, like I did, through entrepreneurship or anything if we don't have control of that. So I've really stepped into it a lot this year, and we'll see. I mean, we're going to hope. We're just hoping.
Amy Guittard:
I know.
Jeni Britton:
We hope. And I'm like, I really like we will. I do everything over the next 13 days that is in my power to make sure that we defend our future.
Amy Guittard:
Yeah. Excellent. Okay. Shifting gears just a little bit. A lot of us have our names on our brands, our chocolate, our bottles of wine. For you, it's your first name, very personal. Does having your name on everything you do bring added pressure? And more specifically, what does it mean to you?
Jeni Britton:
It does, but also I will go back to that. I live in Ohio, and for some reason it doesn't feel like it's much pressure. I don't know why, because Ohio is a place that it's quiet. Everybody's just everybody. So yes, and I think it's different when I'm in New York or when I'm in L.A., because I feel like people think of it differently there. So that's a plus and a benefit for me. There is pressure, but yeah.
And more than anything, the pressure that I feel, at Jeni's and as Jeni, is to stand for the things that I think are right within the company, how the company's run. Because when you put your name on something, that's what it means. What are you going to stand for? When are you going to cross the line and say, "I've had enough. This is not right. We're going to change." And you get to do that when your name is on it. And I take that very seriously, I guess. I think that's really important. I try to keep my name pretty powerful so that I have always a lot of power in the company, even if I'm not there every day.
Amy Guittard:
Well, and even growing the brand too, sustaining the spirit of you through the growth of the brand and building that and bringing on more employees and getting your ice cream out there. I mean, that's commendable and also a driving force, I think, for also your employees.
Jeni Britton:
And it's really cool, because I'll go to a shop in Scottsdale and I will have not met anybody there yet before, and I'll hear them saying something that I would say at the market in 2006 about the chocolate and the way we make our chocolate. It's so cool to see that I really know, I know from experience, that how you lead is the company. So if the company's not going well, it's because of the leadership and because of the tone that you set on your team.
Amy Guittard:
Yeah, for sure. So you recently launched a new brand, Floura. What is Floura and why did you embark on this new brand?
Jeni Britton:
Well, I didn't mean to start another company. I really didn't. In COVID was when I realized that Jeni's didn't need me, and it was really a struggle for me. I realized at this point the company's doing so well. We have an incredible CEO. The creative team that I trained over the last 10 years is really in control. They're amazing. It's actually kind of disruptive when I show up. That was a plus.
Amy Guittard:
What do you mean by that, it's disruptive?
Jeni Britton:
Well, I always want to make everything better. So what it means is that I'm always looking for the default defects, and that's not fair for them. It's not for the team. And so I can do that in a better way on the outside through the CEO and let her manage through that, versus kind of going in at the levels that I was playing in and the company. I think it's something that every founder... Founders have this personality where we just always want to make everything better. That's just what we do, especially when you're sort of starting the company, but at some point you've got to sort of let it go and turn it over to process.
And it was probably a little late for me, but during Covid, really around 2020, I made that realization and decided to step back. It was really heartbreaking for me, the hardest thing. I've had a hard life and so many crises. This was the hardest thing I ever had to do, because it's like cutting off your shadow. Jeni's was a world that I created because I didn't feel comfortable in the rest of the regular world, and I was in it for 25 years, and I didn't have friends outside of there. I didn't have community really outside of there. I didn't have really very much. So it was wild, but what happened was I kind of got broken, and then went to the forest and just completely surrendered. And then the universe kind of came out. So we were talking about Floura. Sorry.
Amy Guittard:
I digressed. I love to digress. That's my fault.
Jeni Britton:
But I kind of needed to center it around that, because it really wasn't on purpose. What I decided to do is it was going to help other entrepreneurs and help entrepreneurs kind of hold their help because we're not known for being healthy. I mean, we actually kind of break ourselves, okay, you can do that and come back and that's good too. So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to help other emerging entrepreneurs." So my coach, and my business advisor, and I decided we were going to do that. So we were helping this woman who has a bakery in New Jersey, and she uses vegetables to make baked goods. And I was looking for a vegetable processor that was bigger than the farmer's market for her. And I toured this 600,000 square foot produce manufacturer, produce processing company, and I saw the watermelon rind going out into the landfill.
And I had already been on my own health journey learning about the microbiome, learning about prebiotic fiber. And I had read a whole study on watermelon rind that watermelon rind should be eating, because it's prebiotic fiber. It's super good for your microbiome. And I was like, "Well, what are you guys doing with all that?" And he was like, "It goes to landfill right now. We don't know what to do with it yet." And there were apple cores, same thing, mango skins. And I had also been reading about those. So I asked them to let us set up a shop inside the thing. Now it's a separate thing from the other business. This was a way too big business for the little baker to use. But now we're starting to work on Flora. We set up a studio in there. We start fermenting these ingredients, drying them, milling them into powders two and a half years ago, and now we have a company, it's called Flora, and we make prebiotic fiber.
We actually make ingredients. We're an ingredients company. We make it out of produce trimmings. And so our mission is actually to help reverse chronic illness in America. So 60% of adults have chronic illness, one or more, 41% of kids have chronic illnesses, unacceptable numbers. It's all related to the industrial food diet, all of it, the standard American diet, the SAD diet. What I've decided is, Jeni's we sort of change the system from the outside, growing an artisanal company through the farmer's market. We are making big changes. Doing that takes a long time. This one's going to be changing the industrial food system from the inside. Anyway, now I'm here with this other huge vision that's just way beyond Jeni's, and it's so fun. I'm back in the game, I guess, of founder.
Amy Guittard:
I was going to say once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur.
Jeni Britton:
I'm tickled. I love it. Yes, it's great.
Amy Guittard:
Yeah.
Jeni Britton:
It's cool.
Amy Guittard:
No, that's really exciting. So what's the biggest lesson you've learned over the years that you're applying to this new brand?
Jeni Britton:
It's trust your instinct, just keep walking. Because I'm partnered up with my coach and my business advisor, and we know each other really, really well. They're two guys, but we all are in the sort of feminine, they've read all the books, they've done all the mushrooms, they've got all this stuff. So they're there, they're with me. And it's very much this sort of feminine energy of the business. And so we are like, we really feel the wind in our sails.
We really feel like all we have to do is just keep going and trusting what we're working on, and people are coming to us. Everything is kind of coming to us. There's an abundance that's happening. It's beautiful. And this is what, by the way, women do in business. We do. And it's pretty cool. And the opposite of that is controlling everything, having to over-plan, over-control. I mean, we would never have been able to find this, figure all this stuff out if we hadn't just had this sort of ethos of peel back the onion one at a time. Give it the time and space it needs to develop and to become something.
Amy Guittard:
Yeah, that's great. Kerry knows I love a lightning round.
Jeni Britton:
And I'm horrible at lightning rounds. My brain shuts down.
Amy Guittard:
This is going to be fun. I'm winging it. Okay. Coffee or tea?
Jeni Britton:
Oh, okay. I can do that.
Amy Guittard:
Yeah, these are easy. I think.
Jeni Britton:
Well, one coffee in the morning and then one tea in the, okay.
Amy Guittard:
Okay. I get where we're going with this. Vanilla-
Rooibos is my tea.
Jeni Britton:
Okay.
Amy Guittard:
What's your superhero skill?
Jeni Britton:
Empathy.
Amy Guittard:
Okay. Favorite food city?
Jeni Britton:
Well, I don't know. The island of Elba had the best ice cream that I've ever had. I've gone twice now, two different summers, and oh my gosh, their coconut and lemon sorbet. It's amazing. She's really great. She's a woman. We'll all go there next summer.
Amy Guittard:
Okay, great.
Jeni Britton:
I'll show you.
Amy Guittard:
Next Cherry Bombe Jubilee.
Jeni Britton:
She's incredible.
Amy Guittard:
It'll be an ice cream cone with a cherry on top. Favorite cuisine?
Jeni Britton:
Cuisine, potatoes.
Amy Guittard:
Have you ever made a potato ice cream?
Jeni Britton:
No.
Amy Guittard:
Okay. I had to ask.
Jeni Britton:
No.
Amy Guittard:
No? Potato, olive oil, sea salt, rosemary?
Jeni Britton:
No, no. I tried to do french fry one time, but it was disgusting, it wasn't good.
Amy Guittard:
Okay. Okay. I was going to make some comment about the butter melting at your body's temperature, but I can't go there. My science facts are not strong enough.
Jeni Britton:
I think you could do potatoes on top.
Amy Guittard:
Okay. That could be good. Like a little crumble. Okay. Continuing.
Jeni Britton:
Condiment.
Amy Guittard:
Condiment. Beach or mountain?
Jeni Britton:
Definitely mountain.
Amy Guittard:
Okay.
Jeni Britton:
With forest.
Amy Guittard:
And then last but not least, I have to ask this. Dark chocolate or milk chocolate?
Jeni Britton:
Okay. Milk.
Amy Guittard:
Or white?
Jeni Britton:
I'm milk. I'm milk. Is that can be okay with you?
Amy Guittard:
Of course. I eat so much milk chocolate. I eat a lot of milk chocolate.
Jeni Britton:
Okay. It's not a popular opinion in a lot of places, but I've always been. So if our milk chocolate ice cream is milk first, it's actually condensed milk.
Amy Guittard:
Oh.
Jeni Britton:
So we use a lot of condensed milk and then chocolate. So, it's not just like a diluted dark chocolate. It's how people make ice cream. They just put dark chocolate in it, but they add more cream. But we have condensed milk in ours, so it tastes like milk. There's little salt, and then chocolate.
Amy Guittard:
Wow. Okay.
Jeni Britton:
I love it.
Amy Guittard:
Good to know.
Jeni Britton:
But it's all chocolate. Yeah.
Amy Guittard:
Excellent. Jeni, thank you so much.
Jeni Britton:
Thank you. And thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. I would love for you to subscribe to Radio Cherry Bombe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a rating and a review. Anyone you want to hear on an upcoming episode? Let me know. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Joseph Hazan is a studio engineer for Newsstand Studios. Our producers are Catherine Baker and Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial coordinator is Sophie Kies. Thanks for listening, everybody. You are the Bombe.